Though I’m not sure where you stand, Doug, on the issues I brought up. I can say that I talked about modern (today’s) Republicans, not Eisenhower who I also admire. Eisenhower was much too far to the left to be nominated by either Republicans or Democrats in today’s political/economic environment. Not only did he institute the socialist public road system of interstate highways but maintained the high income tax rates that helped build that system. (Remember the top marginal rate was over 90 percent.) Though I think Nixon was a scum, I think he too was much too liberal to be nominated in either party today. Today’s Republicans would like both OSHA and the EPA abolished. I didn’t accuse them of anything they haven’t already told us they want to do. They have said they want to privatize Medicare and social security. They have said they want to loosen restrictions on oil drilling (remember “Drill Baby Drill”). They’ve said they want to abolish minimum wage and get rid of Planned Parenthood Clinics.

My dislike of Republicans has nothing whatsoever to do with Watergate. I have no idea of the shenanigans leading up to Nixon’s resignation. Woodward and Bernstein could argue that better than I. It has to do with their making competition into a moral goal as opposed to something that needs to be controlled and regulated like greed. But my friends on the left would say the Democrats are just as bad. While I disagree with that, Democrats are part of the problem. But I was totally critical of the Democrats in an essay shortly after the national election in November so this little essay was directed at the Republicans.

Robin Lehman

Warren

P.S. It makes sense that Martin Luther King was Republican. The southern Democrats of that time were Ku Klux Klan racists. But he wrote a note to Coretta Scott, when he was courting her, saying he tended more toward socialism than capitalism. R.L.